Comment: Your car - the unknown entity

600 hours of attention has now been devoted by the Mozilla Foundation to the data security of automotive brands offering in the US. Mozilla claims that a Japanese manufacturer's privacy statements in practice allow data such as "preferences, traits, psychological trends, inclinations, behaviors, attitudes, intelligence, skills and aptitudes" to be sold to data brokers, law enforcement and other third parties. A horror scenario that the German importer objects to for its vehicle.

If you want to have an impact, you sometimes have to exaggerate, even if your accusation is based more on reading the data protection rules than on practice. For example, the original accusation that all the brands investigated had offended against data protection does not stand up either. Is this a false theme spilling across the Atlantic?

A week later, the Foundation corrects itself and praises European data protection legislation, known in this country as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This once again confirms the previous impression: the Old World holds the rights of the individual higher than the New World and many of the new participants in the global market.

So the Mozilla action does not affect Europe. But it could serve to see the role of data security not only in terms of expensive expenditure. The more the world becomes aware that personal data is an asset worth protecting, the more important trust in data protection becomes. Automakers in Europe, and especially in Germany, could soon add a trust premium to their brand value because data protection can sell cars. (Peter Schwerdtmann, cen)